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Comment by ohnope | Hacker News Reader

Love it. Their ongoing IKEA collaboration is definitely rubbing off. (downside: you pretty much get one shot folding the sheet metal the right way). Flat packed DIY build is great. Compatible with Eurorack, and the OP-Z is getting a CV/gate module.

Now that Teenage has 2 products out there that are designed with modular expansion in mind, it will be exciting to see how they update them over the years.

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What IKEA is good at is continuously decreasing the work involved, error rate, quality issues etc. I can see no practical purpose to folding the metal yourself in this case, other than to make it feel more special than it is.

I think the practical idea is "flat pack" - smaller package for shipping. Of course, TE doing flat pack without an economy of scale is less about spatial efficiency and more about allowing their customers to build something themselves in order to feel a closer connection to the object (that's perfectly ok)

I produce a some what similar Eurorack module. Ours is electrically more complicated, but mechanically much simpler.

The final assembly is the most labor intensive part of our process. When we get an order from one of our retailers for 10+ products, it takes us a full day just to build/test/pack, because of this.

By selling these as "Ikea style" I promise they're able to massively reduce the cost for consumers by outsourcing their assembly.

Unlikely for a number of reasons. For one Stockholm (and Sweden) is very expensive and their products already show more advanced manufacturing techniques. This suggests some sort of contract manufacturing. Their products are also already expensive themselves so it would really make sense to spend a lot of resources designing something to save on shipping or manufacturing. For IKEA it does because they have very large volume and small margins.

It's also more fun. If someone wants an already assembled modular there are 2000 other options.

Sure, but why not actually have something that you need to assemble for a good reason? Like some eurorack cases go for ~300€ and those are just a PCB, some wood and a metal rail. You make that modular in a flat pack for 30€ instead with the need for assembly and I am not complaining.

Flat pack / DIY assembly does not magically lead to 10x reduction in the cost of an item.

Also, deciding to do DIY assembly changes how you think about / plan the design + manufacturing of the object, because you aren't training a workforce to assemble specialized parts, but now need a system that most people could pick up and assemble without any major mistakes. It's more design and thinnking, not less.

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